For them not to try to speak up and influence policy could be considered criminal negligence on the part of the Jewish community. However, where Dowd is altogether wrong is to fail to point out that the Jewish pro-war lobby exists within a much larger universe of pro-war conservatives.---------Having read your previous post, I am very surprised by this one.
You are totally wrong.
The Jewish communiy would never approve actions by a Jew acting in official capacity that are contrary to his duties. Any Jew in the government, as well as Gentile, is supposed to promote, to full extent of his capacity, the interest of the United States.
What you have said, whether deliberately or inadvertently, is a libel that anti-Semites like Dows promulgate.
What an absolute misreading of everything I stand for.
I was pointing out, rightly, that Jews have learned the lesson of the Twentieth Century. I would argue that they have learned it a whole lot better than have Gentiles. There aren't too many self-hating Jews writing bitter criticisms of Israel and Zionism in the editorial pages of The Guardian, now are there? Nope. Most of them are Gentiles, like Robert Fisk, John Pilger, or Polly Toynbee.
If there is a Jew in power, and he sees the likes of a Saddam Hussein coming at him, it would be well nigh criminal for him not to speak up. When Jews did not speak up; when Jews did not resist, the result was a railhead in Poland that the Germans called Auschwitz. I have no problem with a Jew remembering what became of his people in the Twentieth Century to apply those lessons to the crises of the Twenty-First. That is no libel; that is a Jew applying the lessons of a painful past to protect the larger society from evil.
Just because a Jew says that it is a good thing to protect Israel does not mean that it is wrong for him to say it, simply because he is Jewish. It does mean that he values Israel as an ally, as a Democracy, and as a homeland for the Jewish people. It does not follow that he is arguing for the security of Israel at the expense of his own nation.
I will leave it to the likes of Dowd to peddle the polite anti-Semitism of the chattering classes. Such thinking is not for me.
Be Seeing You,
Chris